


I Can, Part 2: Normal People, or Many Years Later

by midgardian_leviosa



Series: I Can. [2]
Category: Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Light BDSM, No Smut, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:42:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26879155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midgardian_leviosa/pseuds/midgardian_leviosa
Summary: Many years have passed. Edward visits a sex shop by accident and has an epiphany. Everyone lives happily ever after.
Relationships: Kim Boggs/Edward Scissorhands
Series: I Can. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638370
Comments: 7
Kudos: 17





	I Can, Part 2: Normal People, or Many Years Later

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is the only story I have ever posted that does not have explicit sex, but this story has been bursting out of my heart for months so here you go. Enjoy.

Edward Scissorhands fic

I Can, Part 2

The gears turned slowly, laboriously, grinding with a strained metallic scrape and a puff of brown smoke. The metal ball that used to be shiny twenty-some years ago rolled down its rickety wooden track and struck the pendulum, sending the lever shooting up to the ceiling with a “fwup!” where it struck an old bronze bell. 

“Ding!”

“Coffee’s done,” Edward said, glancing away from his beloved contraption to take in the figure of his wife bustling through the front door, barely visible underneath the layers of sweaters and scarves and earmuffs. He smiled. “Kids got on the schoolbus on time?”

“Barely,” she laughed. She began to extricate herself from the tangle of winter gear. “Gosh, Ed, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this New York weather.”

Edward laughed. “No, I don’t think you will.”

Kim rolled her eyes. “Easy for you to say.  _ You _ don’t get cold.” She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his head. “My crazy, wonderful husband. You’re one of a kind.”

Edward inhaled sharply, an instinct picked up from Kim over the years. “Actually, there was something I wanted to tell you.” He felt her heart rate pick up, and he went on. “Nothing bad. Just interesting.” He felt her relax. “Do you know that bookstore that just opened up on 18th Street?”

She giggled. “Well, I wouldn’t call it a proper bookstore…”

Edward chuckled. “Well, I didn’t know that at the time. You know how I love books--”

“Ever since you invented it, I can barely tear you away from that ingenious page-flipper!”

He laughed. “So, I thought I would buy some more books, and I went in--”

“You didn’t!” Her eyes were wide.

“I did.” A smile played on his lips, and soon they were both cracking up.

“I can’t believe--”

“Neither can I!”

They took a moment to catch their breath.

“So I walked in…”

. . .

It didn’t look like any other bookstore Edward had even been in. At first glance, he noticed that the magazine and VHS collections were much more extensive than usual. 

At second glance, he did a double-take. 

His eyes grew wide and his heart ticked fast. This place was... _ indecent _ . The cover of each magazine and video displayed a woman in hardly any clothing with heaving, enormous breasts. But perhaps the most scandalous part was their expressions. Each woman was looking at the camera the way his Kim looked at him just before taking him in her hand and sliding him inside--he was struck momentarily with the outrageous idea that someone must have been watching them, to so perfectly mimic those seductive lines of her face. 

He shook his head. That was silly. Other women probably looked like that, too.

He had never really thought of that before, and he did not like to think of it now. There was only his Kim; there was nobody else. It simply was not in his programming. 

Sure, there were friends--loads of friends--and there were clients for his landscaping company, and he would often have long conversations with women interested in purchasing his sculptures, but it had not occurred to him to imagine that they, too, might be able to do what Kim did to him, alone, in secret. 

He shook his head again to clear out the distasteful images of other women naked. Disgusting.

He was on his way out of this uncomfortable faux-bookstore when one magazine caught his eye. On its cover was a man lying in a bed, his hands tied to the headboard, while a woman kneeled over him. 

“What?!” Edward startled himself by speaking aloud.

“Got a question? Can I help you?” The sales clerk was walking directly toward him. Edward bit his lip and tried not to panic.

“This...picture…” He spoke slowly, slipping into old habits.

“What about it? Spit it out. You making fun?”

“No...not fun…” He shook his head. “I…” He paused, thinking hard, before finally asking, “Why?”

“Why what?” The clerk was getting angry now, Edward could feel it. But he had to know.

“Why...would...she tie his hands? He has...hands,” he said. “Real hands.”

“Ah,” the clerk said, seemingly registering Edward’s scissors for the first time. “I didn’t notice. That’s really something. How the hell haven’t you torn that magazine to shreds? Why, there isn’t a single mark on it!” 

“I get by,” Edward recited his usual response. “I’m an inventor.” He detached his standard-manipulating-device and showed it to the clerk before reattaching it.

“Huh.” He seemed impressed. Edward smiled a little. People usually were. But the man had forgotten about his question, so Edward reminded him.

“Why would she tie his hands?”

“Oh, just for fun. Some people like that. You know how it is.”

Edward frowned. “For fun? But...he has hands.  _ Real _ hands. He doesn’t need them to be tied,” he explained, quite clearly, in his opinion. 

The man laughed and shook his head. “Sure, he doesn’t  _ need _ it. But lots of people like it. They call it BDSM. They think it’s fun.”

“Why?”

“Weeeellll,” the man drew it out, thinking. “Now, it’s not for me, you understand, but for those people, I guess the man likes being at a woman’s command, totally under her control. Having his hands tied up and lying there, helpless, and hearing a long, tall, mean woman walk in with her high heeled shoes clack-clack-clacking, and knowing that she can do anything she wants to you, and hearing her crack her whip--”

“A whip?” Edward had sort of been following up until that point.

The man flushed. “Well, not me, of course, but that sort of thing. That’s what some people like. It’s not uncommon. It’s pretty normal,” he justified.

Edward felt thunderstruck.

The man cleared his throat. “You gonna buy that rag or not?”

Edward shook his head, placed it back on the shelf, and walked all the way home.

. . .

Kim’s mug of coffee had long since gone cold, ignored as she listened with rapt attention, tears building up in her eyes. When the story ended, she threw her arms around Edward. “I’m the luckiest woman in the world,” she whispered into his hair.

“Why?” he said, confused as to how she had gotten that out of this story.

“The things you said...about the other women...oh, Edward. You don’t know how special you are.” Her tears fell into his hair. “You’re the perfect man.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but she put a finger over his lips before he could speak. “And don’t you dare say that you’re not a real man. Why, that story proves it, doesn’t it?”

He quirked his head to the side like a bird, quizzical.

“Well, it does, doesn’t it? Why, Edward, you have emotions like a man, you talk like a man, you  _ certainly _ function like a man--well, more like a superman--you can create art and go shopping and read and invent and tuck the kids into bed. Why, there’s nothing about you that isn’t just like any other man out there, only better!”

He smiled a sad little smile at his wife, his beautiful, living, human wife, with her hair that had a few stray grays that she thought nobody noticed, and her soft wrinkles that perhaps nobody else  _ had _ noticed, and the way she was just a little, well,  _ older _ than she had been, while he was the same, just exactly the same, as he always had been and always would be. But she could never understand, and he hoped she would never bring it up. It broke his heart to think of it.

But now was not the time for melancholy. He wrenched his attention back to the present.

“Edward? Earth to Edward. There you are, I don’t know  _ where _ you go sometimes,” she said, smiling, and kissed him. “As I was saying, this just proves it. All this time, we thought we just had to tie your hands up and that we could never make love like, well, like normal folk. But now it turns out, we can. We do! That man said lots of people do it just like we do, Ed. Isn’t that wonderful? We  _ are _ normal people, Ed.”

She looked into his eyes with such love and joy that her emotions spread all through him and he kissed her. “Yes,” he said, smelling the coffee that he made each morning, hearing the whirr of the toy-put-away-er he had invented after stepping on a Lego one time too many, feeling the life they had built together one brick at a time.

He wrapped his arms around her and held her close as he had a thousand times before and as he would a thousand times after: snug, safe, perfect.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make me super happy!


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